Of Pawns and People
by purplehairedwonder
Summary: Chess; the elegant game. But for Suzaku and Lelouch, it translates to something more. Zero's game with Schneizel shows Suzaku something about himself while Lelouch finds the parallels between real life and chess fascinating. Two one-shots. Revised.
1. Of Pawns and People

**Author's Note(s):** The relationship between Suzaku and Lelouch is too much fun not to explore whenever possible. This isn't long, but I like it. This takes place during the chess match in Turn 9.

When reading this, keep in mind it is written from Suzaku's perspective. I'm exploring his own emotions and thoughts at this point; doesn't mean it's accurate, but Suzaku doesn't have the knowledge about Lelouch/Zero that we, the audience, do. Also, at this point, I'm pretty sure Suzaku knows that Lelouch has regained his memories, even if he can't act on it yet since he has no concrete proof.

Comments and criticisms welcome.

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Of Pawns and People

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Suzaku watched on silently as Schneizel El Britannia and Zero waged on a war in the form of a chess match. Chess was an elegant game fit for royalty—that was what the two competitors were, after all—and this particular match was symbolic of the turn the war between the Black Knights and the Britannian Empire would take in the future.

The stakes of this game were incredibly high, and Suzaku could not help but recognize that this was the second time the Second Prince had wagered Suzaku's life on a gambit. The first time had resulted in Lelouch using his Geass on Suzaku to ensure their survival. If Schneizel were to lose this wager, Suzaku didn't like his chances in the hands of the Black Knights.

And as the two master strategists plotted their moves, Suzaku was left to wonder what Schneizel saw when he looked at other people. Did he actually see other human beings, or did he merely see pawns on a life-sized chess board for him to move on a whim? His brilliant tactical mind seemed to suggest that, especially considering how he operated on the battlefield. The Knight of Seven wanted to believe in the best in people—a weakness of his, perhaps—and the spark in Schneizel's eye when he spoke of Euphie made Suzaku want to trust in the man. Euphie wouldn't have looked up to someone who merely saw others as pieces to maneuver in his own schemes, after all.

But when Schneizel moved his King directly in front of Zero's, a move that was certain to lose him the game, Suzaku could not be sure. Even if he was merely testing Zero's character, he was betting the life of one of his own on the outcome. But for someone like Schneizel, perhaps gaining an insight into his adversary's mind was worth the life of one soldier, Knight of the Round or not.

And Suzaku realized suddenly that that was why Schneizel and Zero were such tactical geniuses; they were able to distance themselves from their feelings and judge their actions as if they were playing a game of chess, though the stakes were life and death. Suzaku had never been able to beat Lelouch at chess because he had been too concerned about losing individual pieces while Lelouch had seen the big picture, calculating the losses he could afford to gain the desired outcome. If a few had to be lost for the majority to survive, then it was necessary.

When Lelouch attempted to teach Suzaku to play chess, he had emphasized the importance of calculated losses. After all, he had studied under men in the Japanese military, like Todoh, so had learned the same idea worked there. Seeing Lelouch's point after countless losses, Suzaku applied the concept to real life when the war against Britannia was going poorly. The body count was rising, and even a young boy like Suzaku could tell that the longer they fought, the more people would die and the worse off they would be once they lost. But his father was a proud man and would hear none of it.

In a fit of anger toward his father for acting so selfish when countless lives could be saved, he killed him. It was a calculated loss, one might say, that forced Japan to surrender shortly after. He sacrificed his father's life so the majority would survive to fight on another day. But from the moment the knife pierced his father's skin, Suzaku felt nothing but regret.

While he wanted nothing more than the Japanese to continue living, the price was too high for him. Every life, like every piece he had valued when playing Lelouch at chess, was valuable. Victory through a means like "tactical losses" was not satisfying. It wasn't right and he would have to live with that mistake for the rest of his life, while his father, and his nation, had paid the ultimate price.

It was this guilt that caused Suzaku to reaffirm an adamant belief that each individual piece was important, even if it was not strategically smart. He would never be able to forgive himself for his father's death, so all he could do was protect as many of those pieces as possible.

And so, Suzaku's inability to look past the individuals was the reason that he could never agree with men like Schneizel and Zero. After his own experience, he no longer believed in strategic sacrifices for the greater good. Now, when he looked at other people, he saw the lives that they lived day in and day out. He saw something precious and worth protecting. Every life lost was something priceless that could not be regained. He had taken that from his father and his people when he caused Japan's surrender, but he would try his hardest to protect them now.

Suzaku may not have been able to beat Lelouch at chess when they were 10, but he would beat him when the scope of their game reached life-sized proportions. He would win because he saw the man under the mask while he was certain that Lelouch saw him as a piece on the chess board of the battlefield whose moves he needed to predict. Though Lelouch might think that knowing Suzaku as well as he did would factor favorably into his predictions as it had before, he would not take into account the fact that Suzaku didn't care about Zero; not really. No, Suzaku was concerned with the man behind the terrorist leader, and that was where Lelouch's predictions would steer him wrong.

For now, Suzaku was merely an observer of a game between two expert tacticians, but one day, Suzaku would be the one to declare on Zero checkmate.

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_Revised as of 7/20/08_


	2. The Elegant Game

**Author's Note:** I've never actually played chess before, so it this ends up sounding terrible to a practiced eye, my bad. However, with my Suzaku-chess piece, I wanted to have a Lelouch one as well. It's a little rough, but overall, I'm fairly pleased with it. Comments and criticisms are, as always, appreciated.

**Author's Note:** I do not own _Code Geass_.

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The Elegant Game

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From a young age, Lelouch found it fascinating how chess could be applied to real life. When Schneizel had been the only person he had been unable to defeat in a game, Lelouch knew that his brother would be his greatest obstacle in the future, though he never could have imagined how that would play out.

His father, the Emperor, had always approved of his children playing chess, because it was a game of strategy and only those who could successfully strategize could truly hope to succeed the throne. "Only fools wage war," he had told them. Instead, behind-the-scenes strategizing and political machinations were the preferred methods for victory. Lelouch had never paid much attention to that fact until much later in his life. It took that long for him to be able to appreciate it, truthfully.

Later, when he had taught Suzaku to play chess, Lelouch found it fascinating that a person's outlook on life could transfer to their playing style. He had never noticed it before since he had only played with those who had lofty aspirations. But when he played with his friend, he couldn't help but notice Suzaku's reluctance to lose each individual piece, even if the loss was strategically smart. He had tried on multiple occasions to explain the necessity of losing pieces to Suzaku, but the Prime Minister's son refused to accept his explanation, saying each piece was equally important, no matter its standing. It wasn't until he met Suzaku seven years later that he could really appreciate that part of his personality.

Once Lelouch donned the Zero mask, he took up the role of the king on the side of the Black Knights. In chess, the king is the most important piece, and indeed, Zero was the most important piece of the Black Knights since they would not exist without his leadership. In chess, the object of the game was to trap the opponent's king so that it could not avoid capture. To take down the Black Knights would involve the complete destruction of not only Zero, but what he stood for. Yes, Zero would be continually moving around to avoid capture while working to trap his opponent's king: the Emperor, Charles Di Britannia.

Indeed, in chess, the king will rarely play an active role until the end; until then, he merely seeks to hide behind friendly pawns. In the end, however, the king emerges to play a prominent offensive role while assisting in the promotion of the remaining pawns. It would indeed seem like Zero was hiding behind his Black Knight pawns until it was time for him to take action; to take his revenge. He would direct his pawns and they would move for him. However, he gave them reason to act as his shield. Without him, the rebellion would be dead; the game would be lost.

What Lelouch had not counted on was the emergence of Britannia's knight: Suzaku. He supposed it was fitting, him as the black king and Suzaku as the white knight. For a long time, Lelouch fought Suzaku without knowing who he was, and once his identity as the Lancelot's pilot was revealed, Lelouch knew deep down that the battle would come down to the two of them.

Upon learning that Suzaku had killed his father to stop the war with Britannia at the age of 10, Lelouch had not only been shocked, but had been forced to reevaluate what he knew about his best friend. While Suzaku continued to believe that every piece was valuable, his reaffirmation of that belief seemed to stem from the guilt that his actions had cost his people their identity and livelihood. He had stepped outside his core of beliefs in attempt to stop the fighting, and had only left himself with more pain. It seemed appropriate, then, that Suzaku act as he did now.

As Lelouch became accustomed to seeing those around him as pieces on a life-sized chess board, he realized that the white queen was none other than his half-sister Euphemia. The queen was the most powerful piece on the chess board, and indeed, she was the factor that motivated Suzaku's actions more than anything as they grew closer. Even in death, she was his prime motivator in everything that he did. He would forever be Euphemia's knight before anything else.

The queen is most powerful when the enemy king is poorly defended, and indeed, had Lelouch's Geass not gone haywire at an inopportune moment, he would have cooperated with her Special Administrative Zone. When he was alone with her, she had convinced him to work alongside her and, had fate not had a twisted sense of humor, the game would have played out much differently.

If Euphie had been the white queen, then Lelouch's own black queen would, of course, be Nunnally. She was the entire reason he had taken on the Zero persona and the entire reason he fought for a better world. He wanted a world that she could be proud of when her vision returned. The bloodshed that littered the current world was not suited for her. And thus, Lelouch fought. His sister was the entirety of his being and without her, his actions no longer had meaning.

His thoughts often turning to his best friend, Lelouch would once again be struck by how chess could be applied to real life. After all, if, in a game of chess, only a king and a knight remain, then checkmate is impossible. Somehow, that seemed appropriate for the relationship between Lelouch and Suzaku. No matter the betrayals and heartbreaks on either side, Lelouch didn't think it possible for either of them to really end it. There was something deeper between the two that would just not allow it. Suzaku had tried when he brought Lelouch before the Emperor, but that had merely been check. And they both knew it.

Ironically, one of the ways to get out of check is to interject a piece between the threatened king and the attacking piece to break the line of threat, unless, of course, the attacking piece is a knight. Of course, due to the nature of their relationship, there was nothing or no one that Lelouch could put between him and Suzaku to keep himself safe from the white knight. And perhaps, part of him didn't want to be. After all, while Suzaku had sold him to the Emperor for an elite position, Lelouch had betrayed his best friend in turn over the course of their fight. It wouldn't be right to say that he hadn't had it coming, he supposed. He didn't have to like it, but facts are facts.

But while the Emperor erasing his memories had been check, the end of the game was still a long way away. In the end, Lelouch _would_ have his checkmate. And he intended to do it by taking the white knight in the process. If neither of them could end it, then something would have to give. And Lelouch planned to come out on top then as well.

But, despite all the applications of the elegant game to real life, Lelouch found himself unable to completely dissociate those in his life and see merely a chess board as Schneizel seemed to do. Schneizel seemed to have perfected that talent from a young age, and though it had long seemed like a strength to Lelouch when he was younger, he had come to understand that seeing those around him as more than pieces for him to move at a whim could be a strength, too. There was something to be said for the strength of the human spirit, and Lelouch had learned early on not to discount it.

He would defeat Schneizel precisely because he could not distance himself from those around him. He gave his strength to the Black Knights, and in turn they gave him theirs. There were people in his life that should be protected and Lelouch would do his best to see that it happened.

So, not quite Suzaku and not quite Schneizel, Lelouch would play his own version of life-size chess. And he _would_ be the victor. He _would_ declare the final checkmate.

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End


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